Important: This course is online May 16- 28 and at the field station May 29- June 3. Both portions are required.

Description: This course will provide a general introduction of geographic information systems (GIS) that helps study the spatial phenomena in computer systems. The goal of this course is to help students understand basic concepts, theories and techniques of Geographic Information Science, and GIS operations with state-of-the-art software and hardware. The students will also learn the basic skills on data collection with GPS unit in field investigation. After successfully completing this course, students are expected to be familiar with basic GIS principles and techniques, fluent in using a cutting-edge GIS software (ESRI ArcGIS Desktop), capable of organizing geographic data and conducting GIS analysis for basic real world applications (i.e. in Marine Science field).

General Description of Field Activities:First two weeks will be online-teaching through D2L and the third week will be field trips on beach at the field station. Students need to have their own laptops and flash drives. The field will include the beach profiling with total station and beach mapping with Trimble GPS units.

Prerequisites: The prerequisites include any Intro Geography, Geology, Geoscience or Oceanography class. If any questions, please contact the instructor at shu@po-box.esu.edu

Required Textbook for labs: Michael Law and Amy Collins, 2013, Getting to Know ArcGIS, 3rd edition, ESRI: Redlands, CA. ISBN 978-1-58948-308-8. This textbook includes a code for downloading Arc GIS 10.1. You need to install this trial software on your own laptop for six months. http://gis.esri.com/esripress.